Here's the Bad News, Good News, and Old News: The Bad news is that health insurance premiums are going up in 2017. The Good News is that you can keep your own doctor. The Old News is that youcan’t keep your old president.

Smartins Grocery Store is stocking up on my favorite potatoes for mashing. Russets for the starch and Yukon Gold for the flavor. I ain’t that smart a feller to give you a recipe without starting some family tradition fights. If there weren’t no leftovers last year, then you probably got yourself a good recipe.

I do know something about how to eat mashed potatoes. I favor the way the youngins eat em.Build yourself a mesa of smashed taters on your plate. You’re gonna use four to five serving spoons of em to have enough mass to retain the heat, (More salt also keeps in the steam).

Then, take a tablespoon and push down a crater in your mesa, pour hot gravy in the gorge, and you got what every kid loves, a mashed potato gravy lake. Next, drop a big pad of real butter, (the USS Cholesterol) in the middle of the reservoir and construct a levee of cloverleaf rolls around the lakeshore to keep the hot gravy inside of Mount Tater.

I seen something that I didn’t understand at first. It took me a few minutes, then the lights come on. I seen some turkeys and they was all taking turns on one of them electric exercise treadmills. They was trying to lose weight so they wouldn’t be gracing a Thanksgiving tablecloth.

I had to smile cause them birds don’t know what I know. Most of the folks around here love to sink their choppers into a well-done, warm, moist, muscular Turkey drumstick.

I said something to Punkin that made her think that I was getting old. She said, “You sound like an old curmudgeon.”

I give her a disagreeing look and said, “I don’t have time to argue your point. I got to go finish my letter to the Editor.”

Mumford Pickens says, “If you have a tailor and that tailor drives a newer and more expensive vehicle than you do, you don’t need a tailor.”

This column donates its proceeds and joins with the Columbus News-Report’s own continuing support of our troops.

WWW.Hogspore.Com

Just click on my e-mail address below and ask for the weekly column to be delivered to you each week.No one will ever know that you read this kind of stuff.